1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of vibrating a hook suspending coiled wires for the purpose of rotating the wires along the circumferential direction in a treatment bath (containing for example a pickling solution) and of uniformly treating the coiled wires with the solution. More particularly it relates to an improved method of vibrating the suspension hook to obtain a smooth circular motion of the coiled wires.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Hot-rolled wires or those wires that underwent heat treatment have developed scales on their surfaces. These scales must be removed by the proper means, either mechanically or chemically. There are two types of methods of removing scales chemically, i.e., the strand type and the batch type. The strand type of method is to pass a single line of wire through the pickling solution and the batch type is to dip a bunch of coiled wires into the acid solution. These methods must carefully be selected according to the usage of the wires, the condition of the plant site and the condition of the wire materials delivered to the factory. At present time, the batch type of pickling method is widely used.
The batch type of pickling method is used to immerse the coiled wires suspended from the hook into the pickling solution and thereby dissolve iron oxides from the surface of the wires. It is a general practice to provide a vibrator to the suspension hook to vibrate the coiled wires in the pickling solution so that the solution can get into narrow gaps between the wires. FIG. 1 illustrates a typical example of the device for cleaning off scales from the wires. The coiled wires 1 are suspended from a C-hook 3 secured to the underside of a beam 2. The beam 2 is carried by a travelling crane and a hoist crane to a predetermined position where it is lowered. Secured to the upper surface of the beam 2 is a vibrator 4 which may be of an eccentric crank type or an unbalanced weight type directly coupled with an electric motor. In this Figure, the coiled wires 1 are shown immersed in the acid bath 5 containing a pickling solution 6. The beam 2 is mounted on supporting frames 7 erected on each side of the bath 5 with shock absorbers 8 interposed between the beam and the supporting frames. A bunch of coiled wires 1 is moved up and down only, as indicated by the arrow A' in FIG. 2, by the vibrator 4 to expand or narrow the gaps between the wires so as to perform uniform treatment with the pickling solution. In this conventional method, the coiled wires 1 suspended from the hook 3 do not rotate but remain in the same position while in vertical motion so that the upper portion of the wires on the hook are forced together by the weight of the wires while the lower portions separate from each other preventing uniform treatment of wires. To solve this problem, the present inventors have formerly invented a method of vibrating and rotating the suspended coil wires in the solution bath. This method makes use of a vertical vibration as shown in FIG. 2, and is characterized in that the axis of vibration is deviated from or intersects against the vertical line passing through the wire supporting point, or to shift the wire supporting point by means of another contacting member. That is, the conventional method of vibrating the wires consists mainly of vibrating the beam 2 in the vertical direction or in the direction of the Y-axis of FIG. 4--which shows a schematic view of the vibrating device--and shifting the support point of the wires 1 by temporarily lifting the wires from the suspension hook. However, the deviation of the supporting point which can be shifted by this method is very small. The applicant of this invention has found that circular vibration of the beam 2 results in rotating motion of the wires and this new method does not require any special device for rotating the coiled wires.